


Morale Officer

by White Aster (white_aster)



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: M/M, Medical, Other, Psychology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-11
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:39:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/white_aster/pseuds/White%20Aster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ratchet wasn't always a medic.  When a battle injury kicks his old psychological welfare officer programming on again, Ratchet aims to safeguard his crew's mental health by whatever means necessary.</p><p>(In progress.  Will contain mechsmut in later chapters, various pairings.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Diagnosis

Ratchet onlined to a confusing slew of errors, log updates, and the disjointed, desperately-in-need-of-defrag feel of forced medical code changes. He forced his way through the morass of notifications to access his memory core, then froze.

 _\--shouting and laserfire all around, as Ratchet raced across the battlefield. He'd no sooner made it to the Prime's side than he was scanning the damaged arm, even before he transformed to his feet. Clean lasershot through the primary energon reservoir and clipping the secondary sensor cluster. Probably hurt like the Pit, though Optimus merely gritted his teeth and kept shooting over the top of the boulder he'd taken cover behind. The sound of the battle dimmed as Ratchet's medical programming kicked online: analysis, triage, protocol creation.... Ratchet had just transformed his laser scalpel out of his forearm, focus already spiralling down to the damaged components when the roar of seeker engines much too close brought his focus back out and up. Ratchet had only astroseconds to identify Starscream, detect the visible charge building in his weapons, calculate vector, and, with ruthless practicality (NOTHING was more important than Prime), throw himself in front of the blast--_

"Optimus," Ratchet said, fighting the remaining medical overrides that kept him blind and paralyzed. He recognized First Aid's codes with grim relief. At least he wasn't captured and in some Decepticon cell..

"Relax. He's fine, thanks to you. Thank Primus you are, too." First Aid's voice was harried but relieved, a hand touching Ratchet's arm and something writhing in his codebank. "Will you STOP that," First Aid murmured. "I'm not done yet. Don't online your optics, I'm still working on the sensory arrays."

As his processes finished booting up, Ratchet could feel now the uncomfortable itch of his code being tweaked and rewritten by another. Ratchet groped for his medical log and scanned through the growing list as First Aid dutifully logged each change as he made it. The list was enormous.

"Primus," Ratchet said, scanning through and wincing at the width and depth of damage taken and repaired. Circuits fried, sectors corrupted, processing modules, analysis subroutines, Primus, his PERSONALITY MATRIX....

"It's all right. It isn't as bad as it looks," First Aid said, patting Ratchet's shoulder. "What I couldn't fix I replaced from your backups. I have to warn you, though, some of the backups were damaged, too, so sometimes I had to go back to some really ancient timestamps, especially for some of the sensor subroutines. You'll want to go back over it yourself, no doubt."

Ratchet hmmed as he finished scanning through the log. First Aid hadn't been kidding. He'd had to draw an entire sector of sensor data processing protocols from...Primus, he'd forgotten he HAD archived backups that old. "What the hell HAPPENED?"

"Starscream hit you with his nullray, as far as we can tell. You're lucky that we could get you back to the Ark before your autonomics ran out of power and you lost spark containment."

Ratchet twitched his fingers blindly in dismissal. Better him than Optimus. "Casualties?"

He could hear First Aid's exasperation, but he gave his superior officer the casualty report as he finished compiling the code fixes. Nothing terribly bad. Sunstreaker would be in and out while they repaired his left arm, and they were going to have to rebuild one of Ironhide's legs from scratch, but no deactivations. First Aid thumped him gently on the shoulder. "And YOU, SIR, are relieved of duty for the next four duty cycles--"

"The Pit I am, youngling," Ratchet grumbled.

"--unless, of course, you'd like to argue with your attending physician, in which case it will be six." He could hear First Aid's smile. They both knew that the order wasn't worth the time it took to say it and that Ratchet would be back to seeing patients as soon as one walked in the door. Still, the kid was learning. No doubt the rest of the Autobots would lament that he was picking up some of the CMO's temper, but that was fine by Ratchet. The kid was sweet, but he could use a little more backbone. "Now. Go ahead and online your optics, and we'll see if you get any errors."

Finally, Ratchet thought. He snapped his optics on.

First Aid was, predictably, the first thing he saw. The Protectobot's faceplate hid his expression, but his visor flickered fitfully with the reflections of his HUD, and his hand on Ratchet's shoulder was meant to be reassuring. Ratchet could feel First Aid's EM field from the contact, though, and frowned instinctively at the chilled, brittle feel. THAT wasn't right. First Aid felt like he was about three surprises from a full-on glitch. Ratchet queued a surface scan to check the junior medic's vitals, a reminder on his lips already that Aid had to take care of HIMSELF....

And that's when Ratchet realized something was wrong. On several fronts, really.

Cybertronian electromagnetic fields were complex things. Every system in a mech's body contributed its background hum to his field, and they contained so many clues to the mech's functioning that most mechs used them as telltale signs of a mech's mood and general functional state. That was all most Cybertronians could or desired to make of the constantly-shifting sheath of energy. Ratchet knew, however, that if a mech had the right sensory and analysis modifications, if he or she could separate the component signals one from the other like picking out individual instruments in an orchestra, then a simple EM field became an encyclopedia of information. Medics used it as a go-to readout for signs of distress and injury, able to pick out the major systems' frequencies and determine in the broadest sense when something looked off.

That was what Ratchet expected: a handful of numbers on a handful of scales gleaned from a standard med-grade field-and-audio scan.

What he GOT was something else entirely. DOZENS of metrics, drilling down into more fine-tuned physical and psychological parameters than a standard field medic had any use for. Time was--oh so very long ago--that he'd seen such detailed results all the time, that he'd kept scans running through treatment to monitor the patient's mood and responsiveness. But that was forever ago, and he'd since downgraded and upgraded so many times that his sensory processor should have sputtered to a halt at the overload of information he no longer had the programming to analyze. Instead it flitted along with ease, comparing mood indicators with physical status readings and presenting him with a report that was surprising enough to shock him out of wondering why the hell he was suddenly getting such detailed data.

First Aid, his analysis said, was running the ragged edge: systems fully functional but strained nearly to the limit. His power system was ramped way too high, his coolant system chugging to compensate for a core temperature too many degrees off normal. His hydraulics pressure was too high, probably due to chronic strain on his servos and other subtle symptoms of overwork. And the tenor of his field itself.... Ratchet could only stare at his kind subordinate for a long moment. The chill fragility he'd vaguely sensed before was the psychological manifestation of those strained systems: weariness, guilt, almost--no, scratch that, DEFINITELY--pathological levels of stress and worry, all overlaid by a crushing loneliness and alienation that made his entire field clamp unnaturally tight to his body like armor.

Guilt flooded Ratchet's processor. _How in Primus' name did I miss this?_ Ratchet thought. _He's so field-depressed it's a wonder he functions! Why didn't I...wait._

The too-detailed sensor report. The ability to ANALYZE the too-detailed sensor report. And, First Aid had said, a really OLD backup used to patch the corrupted--

 _Oh, frag. Did he pull from...._

Ratchet dove back into the repair logs, finding the unarchiving of one of his most ancient backups and scanning through First Aid's very competent attempt to overwrite Ratchet's corrupted sectors with it. And there it was, a neat block of old but familiar code sitting right in Ratchet's sensor subroutines, amping his EM sensors and setting down the rubrics to allow Ratchet to analyze the more detailed psych-scan data.

 _He did. Well. One mystery solved._

First Aid tapped his shoulder, field flickering (too weakly, Ratchet's sensors supplied, his field was so depressed it wasn't even showing mood reliably) with amusement as he sensed Ratchet's processor activity through the medical hardlink. "Checking up on me, boss?"

Ratchet nodded. "You did a good job, with what you had."

That got a more healthy flush of pleasure, which nonetheless sank too quickly into the general haze of chronic stress. "Any errors?"

"No." It wasn't a lie. Everything was working just as it'd been coded to, after all. First Aid's patchwork repair had been seamless and perfectly functional. Ratchet had lost some of the medical sensory mods that he'd gotten since that backup, but he had those programs archived outside of his system backups and could reinstall them. He shoved the rest of his discoveries about just what code First Aid had inadvertently reawakened to the back of his processor. It could wait. Until he had had time to fully investigate what had been changed and how it would affect his duties. Until First Aid's field didn't feel so very WRONG.

"Great." First Aid disconnected the hardline, stepping back. "You should get some proper recharge and defrag, but unless you see something I don't...."

"I'll be fine," Ratchet said. He reached out as he sat up on the berth, one hand reaching out as First Aid started to turn. "Hey. You should rest, too. You're exhausted."

First Aid started, looking at Ratchet's hand on his arm as if it was a species he'd never seen before. With physical touch, his field depression was even more pronounced, pressing against Ratchet like a lead weight. Without thinking, Ratchet modulated his own field, letting concern and support resonate between them. It was a habit he'd gotten out of a long, long time ago, but that spark-deep loneliness couldn't be ignored. Honestly, he thought, how did an Autobot get like this? What was wrong with First Aid's friends? His gestaltmates?

First Aid tilted his head after a moment, confusion sloshing through his field like heavy oil before being chased by a faint but reassuring thread of pleased affection. Then he chuckled, moving out of Ratchet's reach with what looked like shyness. "You're just trying to get me to go away so you can go back to work."

Ratchet shifted off the berth to stand. He held his field steady but resisted the urge to press reassurance against First Aid's field again. Holding back was like seeing a seeping wound and not being able to stanch the energon flow, but Ratchet knew that pressing now would seem odd. "No. I'll go if you will. Hoist can take care of anyone who comes in."

First Aid's visor flickered uncertainty, and he took the smallest step forward. If Ratchet hadn't been looking for it, he might not have noticed. Seeing a healthy response to a welcoming field was a relief, though. First Aid stopped, then said, carefully, "You...you should really stay here for observation. In case the defrag runs into any problems."

"Then I'll stay here if you'll go rest." Ratchet turned to look at Hoist, who was talking with Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. "Hoist can keep watch. Seriously, 'Aid. I'm fine. You did a good job. Go rest. That's an order."

First Aid looked at him for a long moment before saying slowly, "Yes, sir. It's...it's good to have you back, Ratchet."

"It's good to be back, 'Aid."

First Aid hesitated another moment, before heading over to Hoist (probably to tell him he was on Ratchet-watching duty) and then to the medbay door. He turned at the doorway to look back at Ratchet, who flapped his fingers in a shooing gesture. First Aid pointed mock-sternly at the berth in response then left, the medbay door sliding shut behind him.

Ratchet vented a sigh, climbing back up onto the berth. For once, he wanted the recharge. He could feel his processor chugging, slow and fragmented around the large chunks of newly-compiled code. He needed a recharge, a defrag, and a long, hard thread or three of thought. Not necessarily in that order.

He laid back on the berth, staring up at the ceiling as he reinstalled some of the medical mod software that had been lost in the corruption and not present in the old backup. Once they settled in their appropriate places, he took a long hard look at the heightened sensory analysis protocols First Aid had reinstalled.

The psych-scan protocols were extraneous, really, for Ratchet's current position, either as CMO or field medic. They produced way too much information for a medic who usually needed to focus on a patient's physical well-being first and foremost. Not to mention that he'd have to deactivate them on the battlefield or while dealing with the wounded, lest he be distracted by his patients' pain and distress. These were all the reasons that he'd uninstalled them to begin with, when he'd retrained from psych officer to medic. They were at war: they needed mechs who could heal the physical, not just the mental. That was just as true now as it had been then.

And yet.... And yet. If First Aid, one of the younger, more well-balanced Autobots Ratchet knew, was suffering THAT much and apparently didn't even KNOW it.... Primus, what would the REST of the Autobots look like?

It was, Ratchet thought grimly, his duty to find out.

He disengaged from his code, leaving the psych sensor protocols where they were.

He was a healer, he thought, as he engaged a defrag and recharge cycle. Like hell he was going to let his patients suffer on his watch.

 

Ratchet woke feeling more refreshed than he had in forever. He stretched, grabbed a cube of energon from the medbay dispenser, and had just enough time to finish it and grab a datapad before the first patient of the day limped in: a grumbling Ironhide, his useless leg braced but leaking energon from a newly-torn line.

First Aid joined him on duty, chiding Ratchet for not resting even as he handed Ratchet the tools he needed. Medbay filled up after that, as it always did, the two of them kept busy with maintenance, upgrades, and the last dents and scratches from the latest battle. Ratchet spent the time he wasn't elbows-deep in mech watching everyone who drifted through the Medbay, his newly-sensitive sensors wide open.

Some mechs were fine, or at least as fine as mechs fighting an extended civil war could be. Wheeljack, Hound, Mirage, even (oddly enough, but then again not) the twins were perfectly healthy, their stress levels either low or being properly countered by their systems, their fields responsive and registering anywhere from content to happy.

Others were obviously having problems. Skyfire's field looked like a larger version of First Aid's, but even heavier on the loneliness and alienation. Bluestreak's field shifted wildly, flaring and then clamping tight in a classic symptom of dangerously repressed emotions. Cliffjumper's field was so aggressively angry that it actually contaminated anyone who stood too close to him. Ratchet watched him get into a fight with Huffer (never the hardest task, but still) simply by sitting next to him in the rec room.

Many were somewhere in between: a bit stressed, a touch depressed, a little irrational, but not critical cases.

Then, Ratchet had headed to the officers' meeting, where the pattern just deepened.

Optimus' weariness and guilt were no surprise. Ratchet hounded him constantly to delegate more, to rest more, to take time for the lengthy defrags his multi-thread-heavy processor demanded. Optimus hardly ever listened for more than a day, and it showed in the tight, compressed power of his field, shot through with stress in the particular frequencies of heavy responsibilities. A standard case of "Officer's Clench", as they'd called it back in the Psych Corps. More than enough to earn Optimus a spot on Ratchet's triage list, but not the worst in the room. That designation belonged to Prowl, whose field was so tightly wound around his frame that Ratchet had to up his sensors to get a clean read. As he might have expected, Prowl's field wasn't unhappy, though his systems were running at full tilt and his processor load was redlining even while he was sitting still. He was a finely-tuned engine of tactical genius, whose field practically BLED stress, overwork, and a mech pushing himself blithely past his limits. Prowl was put right at the top of Ratchet's priority list.

And then Red Alert arrived to give his monthly security report. Everyone, even Prowl and Prime, sat back in their seat at Red's arrival, optics taking on the long stare of mechs thinking about something else or (in Jazz's case) pulling up some kind of video game to amuse themselves. Red Alert was the best security director the Ark could ask for, but his reports were long, overly-detailed, and downright boring. This time, Ratchet didn't even notice.

Red Alert's field was a solar flare of worry, alarm, frustration, and furiously churning processors. It only got worse as his presentation went on and it became more evident that no one, not even Optimus, was truly taking his spark-felt warnings (about securing some minor, human-dependent supply lines, this time) seriously. As he finished, and Optimus replied with his thanks and a stock line about taking Red Alert's concerns under advisement, Ratchet could SEE the spike of Red's frustration, followed by a renewed, higher note of almost-panicked processor activity as he set his expression and filed out, back straight and stride purposeful. Determined.

The Ark's crew was riddled with stress, anxiety, and a double handful of other psychological disorders. But Red Alert was self-destructing. Slowly. One self-induced crisis at a time.

 _I have to do something,_ Ratchet thought, as he watched Prowl stride off with a datapad already in hand, Red Alert hurry back toward Security, Optimus caught in another meeting with Mirage and Jazz just outside the conference room. _We can't maintain like this. No wonder we've been losing to the Decepticons. I'd take half the Ark off-duty for psychological evaluation and treatment, if I could. It's got to be affecting their performance._

"You ok?" Ironhide asked, limping up behind him. "You were kinda quiet in there."

"Just...thinking," Ratchet replied. "Had my sensors rattled in that last battle, and I'm still sorting everything out."

"Yeah, I saw." Ironhide gestured down at his braced leg. It had been hit by a missile and was more patch and weld than strut at the moment. It didn't do much but keep him upright and mostly mobile, but everyone agreed that that was better than a cranky, berth-ridden Ironhide. "Couldn't get to you two fast enough."

"I'm just glad that I COULD," Ratchet said, optics turning to where their Prime was still in deep discussion with the spec ops mechs. "Better me hit than Optimus."

"Hey, you're pretty irreplacable yourself, you know." Ironhide elbowed Ratchet in the side. Ironhide's EM field was like his frame: old and scarred but warm and solid. "Aid and Hoist are great and all, but you're our only real medic. Don't go making a habit of gettin' hurt, you hear?"

"Yes, sir," Ratchet replied, with a smile.

Ironhide hmmphed, but grinned back as he turned away. "See you don't."

Ratchet stopped himself from reaching out. Just because Ironhide felt like the healthiest person around was no reason to cling to him like a space barnacle. "Ironhide?"

The red mech turned. "Yeah?"

"Thanks."

Ironhide shot a smile over his shoulder. "Anytime, Ratch'."

Processor ticking, Ratchet headed back to Medbay.

The Ark had never had a psych officer. That class had trickled to nothing long before the Ark's launch, not long after Ratchet had moved on to medic training. As the war had ramped up, keeping mechs alive had been a higher priority than the finer psychological specialties. Not that Ratchet hadn't done his best to deal with psychological issues when they'd come up. It was just that without the psych officer sensory mods, he couldn't get as finely detailed scans and could only catch issues once they...well...became issues. And he was so busy keeping everyone functioning that he could see, now, how little time he actually spent on each patient, how little chance he gave them to say anything, how little chance he gave himself to realize that there was anything wrong. How he'd subtly reinforced the idea that unless there was something physically wrong, or you were a danger to yourself or your crewmates, that you were at the end of the triage line.

He'd done everyone a grave disservice, and the worst part was that no one had seemed to notice.

Primus, he hated this war.

 _No crying over spilled energon now,_ Ratchet thought, lifting his head. _This is your frag-up, medic. Time to deal with it._

 _You have patients to treat._

 

When Ratchet had left the Psych Corps and retrained as a physician, he'd debated whether or not to uninstall all the extra sensory hardware. That was what most people did, after all: switch out the sensory arrays for more standard medical ones, wipe the old subroutines, and replace the coding. Start with a complete clean slate. In the end, he'd reformatted rather than refitted as much as he could. Firstly because he hadn't had enough credits to refit himself completely, and secondly because there were a lot of psych-specific mods that he thought would be useful to a physician. The sensory arrays were similar, and all it took was a new set of analysis subroutines and a recalibration to get him to medical standard. The rest of the training and databases were like any other knowledge: easy to compress and archive, just in case they were needed.

Like now.

Over the next day, Ratchet unarchived everything. It took some doing: he had a lot more things in working memory now than he'd had all those vorns ago, and it took some creative archiving and defragging to settle his psych officer skillset and experience into the enormous medical database he'd amassed.

He spent most of the next off-duty cycle feeling like he was back in med school, reviewing SOP and setting his revived analysis routines on the problem of the Ark's crew.

The majority of his internal debate, was who to approach first. Should he start with the most serious conditions? The highest-ranked Autobots? The easiest treatments? In the end, he'd decided that he was probably rusty enough at this that he should ease himself back in. Not to mention that the crew wasn't used to this type of treatment. They were used to Ratchet the field medic, who moved them in and out of medbay as quickly and efficiently as possible. Ratchet, who had an appalling habit of not asking after his patients' mental well-being. They'd not had anyone ask them about their mental health in hundreds of vorns, so Ratchet pulling out the psych officer routine was going to take some getting used to.

Aside from all that, there was the sheer setup involved. Back on the Corona, Ratchet had had an office with specific space for consultation and therapy. Here on the Ark, he had the medbay and his office. The medbay was right out for any sort of consultation. It wasn't private enough, and no one who'd ever been treated there would consider it a restful and inviting place. His office was a barely-acceptable stopgap. He rearranged the furniture to fit in a few extra chairs off to the side, so he could talk with someone without the desk in between them. It would do, he supposed, until he could find a dedicated space. Until then he'd have to hope that no one needed anything too hands-on...or that they were willing to do it in their quarters.

The next day was a quiet one in the medbay. Ratchet had set himself and First Aid to taking inventory in the morning and training in the afternoon, with First Aid observing while Ratchet wired Ironhide's replacement leg. They'd only been interrupted once, by a shame-faced Tracks with an overextended tension cable from a too-fast, too-flashy transformation. Ratchet watched, surreptitiously, as First Aid, who had been chatting amiably with Ratchet about different wiring configurations, got quieter and quieter as he fixed Tracks. Ratchet could feel Tracks' annoyance across the medbay, and when he looked up he wasn't surprised to see First Aid's field clamped tight to his plating in self-defense.

When Tracks had grumbled his thanks and left, First Aid returned to his perch to observe Ratchet working. "Don't let him get to you," Ratchet said. "He's just annoyed that he messed up and had to admit it."

"Hmm? Oh, Tracks? Of course." First Aid vented a sigh. "I just...."

"Just?" Ratchet asked, when his apprentice didn't seem likely to finish.

First Aid's head tilted up from watching Ratchet's hands, then ducked again. "It's nothing, sir. Personal."

Ratchet looked up, pulling his tools back into his forearms and setting the wires he'd been splicing aside. "Being a healer isn't just about the physical. If there's something bothering you, even if it's personal, I'm always here to listen."

First Aid just stared at him for a long moment, something like shock washing through his field. "Th...thank you. But. I...wouldn't want to waste your time. You've got much more important things to do than listen to my small problems."

"AID," Ratchet said, reaching out and laying a hand on First Aid's shoulder. "YOU are important. If it's enough to bother you, then it's not a waste of my time."

Ratchet didn't even notice that he'd modulated his field for concern and reassurance until First Aid made a small, gasped sound of surprise, tinged with longing and need. First Aid's hand reached out, laying against Ratchet's own against his shoulder, but then slid away as he stepped back, even as his field reached for Ratchet's like a lost sparkling. The desire itself wasn't particularly sexual. More a reaction to the emotion than to the touch, Ratchet guessed. Primus, the Protectobot was a conflicted mess of confusion and worry, wanting comfort but not convinced he could have it.

Ratchet's processor was already ticking through possible causes (and was vaguely horrified that abuse was high up on the list) and wondering yet again how he could have missed this, when First Aid replied, "Ratchet? I... Sorry if I'm wrong, but are you....flirting? With me?"

Ratchet checked a sigh. First Aid wasn't the first or last mech to mistake a psych officer's professional concern for personal interest. "No." _Not that you don't look like you could use an honest interface or three with a good friend, kiddo._ He tried a different tack. "I'm just working off those different sensor protocols you installed. You pulled from a REALLY old backup. One from before I'd even thought of becoming a medic. I had different training, different post, different sensor protocols. No, don't worry, everything's FINE, you did a great job. But I never uninstalled the old sensor mods, just got different analysis protocols. When you did the patch job, it gave me the original analysis protocols back."

First Aid relaxed a bit, head tilted in curiousity. "...all right. I remember they looked a bit odd...kind of bulky, but code's not my specialty, and I knew they were old, and I was...I was in a hurry."

"Understandable. I'm GLAD you were in a hurry, believe me."

A wash of relief and second-hand trepidation went through First Aid's field. "So...is there a problem with them? Are you getting some kind of errors?"

"No, they're fine. The analysis protocols just give me a lot more information on spark resonance and EM field analysis than usual. Widens the analysis range, doesn't filter out as many fluctuations. It gives me a better mental health picture, which is why I was offering to hear you out. You seem a bit...stressed."

First Aid shrugged. "No more than usual, really." He frowned, obviously still thinking. "Spark and field analysis is complicated, though. It would be...distracting, I'd think, to have that on all the time. What kind of post did you have that required it?"

"Psychological Welfare Officer."

Whatever response Ratchet had expected, it wasn't the wide-opticed SHOCK that he got. "You...you were a MORALE officer?"

Ratchet was taken aback a bit. He'd never liked that term, because it never seemed particularly professional, but it was accurate enough. "...yes?"

Watching the shock be chased by horror and shame was like watching a wreck Ratchet didn't know how to stop. "And you...and I...oh Primus, Ratchet, I'm so SORRY-"

Ratchet blinked. "...what?"

First Aid's agitation was palpable, churning through his field. He looked torn, hands reaching for Ratchet and then snatching back. "I didn't KNOW, I never would have.... Primus, Ratchet, I'm so sorry. Look, I'll fix it--"

Ratchet just stared at his rapidly panicking apprentice, not sure what happened but fairly certain that they weren't even talking about the same thing, somehow.

"--I can cobble together something from my own sensor protocols, and we can work from there. It'll be fine, honest. Primus, I hope that I haven't brought up too many bad memories--

 _Bad memories?_ Ratchet ran a diagnostic on his audio receivers.

"--I'll feel TERRIBLE and...." First Aid stopped, ventilating deep to steady himself and looking Ratchet in the optics. "Sir, I know that I'm not trained in this type of thing, but I do hope that if you need someone to talk to about this, or are having any psychological distress, I am always available."

Ratchet moved the diagnostic on to his visual and reasoning centers, as some kind of sudden glitch was all he could think of to explain this. Perhaps it wasn't him, perhaps First Aid had finally snapped under the stress....

The Protectobot was still staring at him, shock and horror sliding through his field as he laid a shaking, hesitant hand on Ratchet's shoulder. "Oh Primus. You...you HAVE had abuse counseling, haven't you, sir?"

"...WHAT?!"

\-----

"--and then he...it is not FUNNY!" This last was addressed to Ironhide, who was currently curled up on the floor of his quarters, shaking with laughter. "He was serious! I couldn't get anything sensible out of him after that. He just kept going on in the same line. I had to threaten him with a sedative to get him to leave me alone and go rest!"

"--ahahahaha, abuse counseling...YOU. Oh Primus bless...ow, hey," Ironhide protested, as Ratchet kicked at his side lazily. "Now, now, Ratchet, maybe you do need some counseling, I mean irrational violence can be a sign of unresolved trauma--OW! Slaggit, medic!"

"I'll show you trauma," Ratchet muttered, kicking out once more for good measure before going back to sipping his energon. It was a measure of his and Ironhide's long friendship when all he'd had to do was show up at Ironhide's door, twitching, and the frontliner had hustled him in and sat him down with a cube of high grade without saying a word. Surprisingly good high grade, too. Probably Wheeljack's. The twins' still was always tuned for potency rather than taste, and this was strong but had a nice, understated tang of some metal Ratchet couldn't readily identify. He knocked back the rest of the cube as he continued. "I've no idea what his glitch is. The entire conversation derailed like Astrotrain on a high-grade binge."

"Wait, wait, you really don't know?" Ironhide leaned back against the couch, reaching up to retrieve his own cube from the table by the couch. "Aid's young enough to react exactly that way. Pit, I thought you were just telling him to get a rise out of him."

"...what?" Ratchet was getting really tired of saying that.

Ironhide tilted his head back, looking up at Ratchet with a frown. "You really don't know? Pit, how'd you not hear about THAT, 'specially if you were in the Corps? Those scandals were all over the place....when was it...20th, 29876-29950 or so."

Ratchet checked the dates. "Primus. I was in the Academy. I was doing my RESIDENCY. I was lucky if I remembered what DAY it was, let alone what was going on outside. What were these scandals? Wait...." Something tickled Ratchet's memory banks, and he followed the association, unarchiving and then unarchiving again. "Wasn't there something about a PO who was blackmailing his crew?"

Ironhide nodded. "There was that. Then there was an investigation or something. Turned up some that were just using the position as a way to get an easy interface. One or two of them were real rapist scumbags. And a half-vorn after that there was a huge scandal about a squadron where they were short psych officers and the command staff were pressuring recruits into what they CALLED psych officer positions but which were pretty much glorified whores."

Ratchet stared at him. "WHAT?! They...WHAT?"

Ironhide held up his hands, half-full high-grade cube tilting. "Just sayin' it like I heard it. It was a big scandal for awhile, and though there were a bunch of damn fine psych officers, you know how it goes: folks remember the bad rather than the good."

Ratchet sat back, remembering. "By the time I got out of the Academy, the Corps were already on the decline. I blamed the wars...didn't think much of it. Well, Pit."

"Pretty much. All the youngsters who never actually served with a psych officer have only the old news and rumors go by. And really, 'cept for old soldiers like you and me, pretty much ALL of 'em here are youngsters."

Ratchet mulled that over. "So," he said slowly, "you think that First Aid thought that I'd been forced into prostitution. And he was afraid he'd reminded me of it and scarred me for life."

Ironhide's lips twitched. He buried them in his cube. "That...about fits his reaction, yeah."

Ratchet thought about that for a long moment...then snickered. Which set off Ironhide again. In the end, they both ended up sitting on the floor, their backs to the couch, ventilations wheezing. "Okay, okay," Ironhide said, recovering first, "in his defense...it was a long time ago...maybe he thought you'd...changed. From someone who could be forced to do...anything, really...into the fine specimen of stubborn medic you are today."

Ratchet considered hitting him again but decided he was too tired. Besides, Ironhide's field felt good: a warm tingle of amusement all along his right side. "Charmer," Ratchet said wryly, heaving himself to his feet.

"Naw." Ironhide grinned as he stood up. "I try to charm you, you'll know it." THAT was accompanied by a rush of something ELSE through his field, something hotter and stronger but gone before Ratchet could get a good read on it.

 _Well, Pit,_ Ratchet thought. _Why not?_

"Oh really?" He chuckled, heading for the door. He turned as he palmed it open, tossing over his shoulder. "I'll be watching for it, then."

The door closed on Ironhide's low chuckle.


	2. Consult

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ratchet and Jazz have a discussion and Ratchet facepalms a lot.
> 
>  
> 
> _Ratchet was so involved in being uselessly incensed over scandals that were millions of years old that he nearly ran into the Autobot waiting outside his quarters._
> 
>  
> 
> _"So!" Jazz chirped, leaning patiently against Ratchet's door. "I heard a rumor!"_
> 
>  
> 
> _"Oh for--" Ratchet vented a sigh. Now he really needed more high grade._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *raises the story from the dead* IT'S ALIVE! XD
> 
> Many thanks to everyone who's commented and poked at me about this story over the TWO YEARS ohgod since the last update! ^_^;; It's taken me awhile to get my writing mojo back, but seems to be working! I'm turning my thoughts back to my ongoing stories, and Ratchet and Jazz were the first in line. :)

Ratchet was so involved in being uselessly incensed over scandals that were millions of years old that he nearly ran into the Autobot waiting outside his quarters.

"So!" Jazz chirped, leaning patiently against Ratchet's door. "I heard a rumor!"

"Oh for--" Ratchet vented a sigh. Now he really needed more high grade. "I am going to have Aid scrubbing instruments for the rest of his life, I swear to Primus."

"Now, now, don't be hasty," Jazz said, hands up in a gesture that was, evidently, supposed to pacify annoyed medics. "From what I can tell, wasn't First Aid's fault. Poor kid IS gestalt bonded, and well.... Last I heard he was spitting mad at Blades and Groove."

Those two were some of the loudest loudmouths on the Ark. It wasn't suprising at all that they would feel the need to share any juicy tidbit of information they'd gleaned from their gestaltmate. Ratchet sighed. He was really, really not up to this right now. It had been a long day. "Jazz, if I tell you that everything is fine and First Aid misunderstood, can this wait until tomorrow?"

"I don't know," Jazz said evenly, helm cocked. "Can it?"

Ratchet made a face. The Ark never slept, though HE desperately wanted to. Jazz was on the night shift, and Jazz was the biggest crafter, purveyor, and listener-to of gossip this side of Swindle. If he explained to Jazz, maybe Jazz would spread it around and by the morning, there'd be fewer mechs who thought their CMO was some kind of victim. Or whore. Or rapist. Or whatever iterations of the three were currently winding their way through the base's rumor mill. Primus....

Jazz laid a hand on Ratchet's shoulder. His field was a perfect shell of friendly/professional concern, not a wave out of place. It felt...odd, and it took Ratch a klik to realize that it was because Jazz was consciously modulating his field...in this case, to project a calm and calming EM profile. That wasn't something the average mech could do (or even detect), but Ratchet wasn't terribly surprised that Jazz had learned the knack. It was no doubt incredibly useful in spec ops work, especially for someone who had done as much undercover work as Jazz had.

Ratchet wondered if Jazz was doing it on purpose or if he'd just been using his field to lie for so long that he did it without thinking about it. 

"Ratch? Seriously, you ok? I know that it's just a rumor, but I wanted to make sure you were all right." Jazz's visor brightened with wry mirth. "Part of my job, ya know?"

Ratchet huffed a soft laugh, thunking his helm against the door frame. "No, actually that should be my job." He reached over and punched in his code. "Come on. Though I hope you brought some high grade. I don't have enough for both of us."

Jazz dutifully pulled two cubes from his subspace, dangling them from his wiggling fingertips. "Never let it be said I'm an inconsiderate guest!"

"Never." Ratchet took one of the cubes as Jazz headed inside. The aroma was harsh, potent. Twinbrew. Ratchet downed the whole thing in one take. It burned pleasantly all the way to his tanks, knocked around a bit, and rekindled the banked fire in his lines.

"So. Want to tell me what the REAL story is?" Jazz asked, making himself comfortable on the couch. "I mean, I'm assuming that something's gotten scrambled somewhere."

Ratchet rubbed his temples. "You here as third in command or just being nosy?"

Jazz spread his hands, cube tipping but not quite spilling. "I can't be both?"

Ratchet just gave him a Look.

"I'm curious what you actually said, which I doubt is anything like what I heard." Jazz shrugged. "And if I get the story NOW, I can tell Prowl and Optimus that it's taken care of."

Ratchet fell back into the chair, frowning at the empty cube. "All right, tell me what you heard."

It wasn't as bad as Ratchet had feared, though entirely too full of misinformation and innuendo for Ratchet's liking. The term "morale officer" was used instead of the proper title, with all kinds of glyph modifiers attached for sexuality and coercion/nonconsent. The consensus seemed to be that Ratchet had been one of those manipulated into the position and abused. Jazz, to his credit, didn't compound the issue. He told it like he'd heard it, but his tone was matter-of-fact and slightly amused, not shocked or derogatory. "And," the head of Spec Ops said, "I'm assumin' that just about none of that is true, by the way."

"Except the psychological welfare officer part, no," Ratchet growled. "Was trained and licensed at Iacon Academy, and believe me, no one could have made me do twenty vorn of psychology, technometrics, and field modulation theory if they'd tried, let alone a hundred vorn of practice. I wasn't forced into it, and I was not TRAUMATIZED by it, except if you count by the amazing amount of mecha who can't manage their own love lives. And Primus, NO, that does not mean I was necessarily PART of them!"

Jazz held up his hands. "Didn't say nothing! I looked it up, Ratch, and I know YOU. I know you were above-board." He grinned. "Saw all the commendations you got, every review cycle, like clockwork."

"Yes, well, Rangefinder knew the value of having a happy crew, and he knew who to thank for that." Ratchet found himself smiling fondly. It'd been forever since he'd thought about Rangefinder and the rest of the crew from the _Corona_. It was so long ago, before the war and everything that had followed. He'd been busy but happy, and all he'd needed to worry about was keeping everyone else happy, as well. It had been...a good time.

When he came up out of his memories, Jazz was just watching him with a silent smile that Ratchet had always suspected meant "you're giving away more than you think you are." Before he could harrumph the conversation to an end, though, Jazz asked: "So, what brought this whole thing on? I mean, it's not like you've been hiding this old post of yours, but obviously you haven't been talkin' about it, either. Somethin' come up that hasn't for the past couple million vorn?"

Ratchet spread his hands. "Bad luck. That hit I took from Starscream's nullray scrambled my processor pretty badly. Aid fixed me up just fine, but it involved pulling quite a lot of coding from backups, and one of them was...really old. It altered some settings that reset me back to my psych officer sensor profile, and the extra data is kind of distracting. When I mentioned it to Aid, that brought up the whole psych officer drama."

"Aaaah, gotcha. N'then Aid bein' upset probably had his gestalt askin' what was wrong and--" Jazz's hands moved in an eloquent circle. "--everything becomes clear. And no doubt everyone'll be all up in your grill, thinkin' they know what's what."

"Of course." 

"But you're ok, right? I mean, you said that the old settings are distracting. You can just set them back to normal, right?"

"No. Well, yes, I can, but from an ethical standpoint, I don't think I should." The medic paused, calculating what he could say without breaching medical confidentiality. "Let's just say that today I've noticed a lot of untreated problems. Some of them severe. I can't just ignore that, and I can't treat it without the psych officer sensor suite. So, it stays...for now. ...What?"

Jazz was looking at him now, gone still in a way that made Ratchet inexplicably nervous. "What kind of problems?"

All of a sudden, Ratchet knew, he was DEFINITELY in the presence of the Autobot's TIC. "...Psychological problems. Stress-based, mostly. Also maladjustments to emotional trauma, social integration problems.... Pit, I don't know why I didn't see it before, sensors or not. We're a bunch of civilians turned into soldiers, dealing with more war and death than most of us were built for. Of course it would create problems, and they USED to be dealt with by psych officers, same as medics would deal with physical wounds. Now...." He spread his hands. "The only trained PO on the Ark's been focusing on the physical so long he's not even thought to be concerned for anyone's psychological welfare."

Aaaand, something he'd said had made Jazz relax. Mostly. Odd. "It's not your fault, Ratch. We NEED you to be concentratin' on puttin' our frames back together. And Smokey and I keep an eye on morale, you know that."

It wasn't the same, though Ratchet didn't want to get into it. Psych officers dealt with individuals, making sure that their cortex and meta were stable and high-functioning and that nothing was holding the patient back from being happy. That was not what Jazz and Smokescreen did. They were interventionists. Crisis-averters. Matchmakers, sometimes, for mecha who didn't know what they were looking for but knew they were unhappy. They were psychological paramedics, not doctors. They tinkered and tweaked the Autobots as a whole but rarely focused on one person for long, and there were some mecha who were just not amenable to their tone of meddling, for various reasons. 

"I know that," Ratchet said. "But your interventions don't change the facts of what I'm sensing. I have to be objective, but I KNOW all of you. Even if we're not friends, you're all my patients, and suddenly I can feel a lot of pain that I haven't been treating."

Aaaaand there the tension was again, prickling at the edge of Ratchet's sensors even without engaging a proper scan. Had he always been able to read Jazz this easily? Probably not. Just like he hadn't been able to sit in officers' meeting and sense Red Alert's impending breakdown, before. The PO suite's tweaks to his default sensor levels (and the fact that he was now hyperaware of every EM field he came across) was just making life more...interesting. 

Jazz was still looking at him. "...What?" Ratchet finally asked.

"What, what?"

"What's wrong? You keep...twitching, like there's a problem. I can feel it."

Jazz smiled, slowly, and that REALLY made Ratchet nervous, though he'd never show it. "Can you, now?"

"YES." Ratchet scowled, TIC be damned. "It's late, Jazz. You going to tell me what's got your wires in a twist, or do I have to guess?"

Jazz shrugged. "Just seein' what you can see. Sensor mod tweaks are always interesting."

Ratchet looked hard at him. "Interesting to spec ops, you mean."

Jazz's answering hand gesture was eloquent and still said exactly nothing. His field evened out back to the mirror-smooth finish it'd been before.

Ratchet debated whether to say something else. He could see several different directions Jazz's notoriously convoluted processor could be threading. He wasn't averse to discussion, but he was tired and his day had been long and annoying, and really what he wanted was to fall into his berth and recharge. "Look," he said, fingers rubbing his optics. "If I tell you that I'm probably not anything you haven't dealt with before in a slightly different configuration AND point out that I've got medical oaths that keep me from using my powers for evil, can this wait until tomorrow?"

Jazz thought about that for a second and held up his hands in defeat. "Sure. Look, not tryin' to make life more difficult for you, Ratch. You know me, just tryin' to see all the angles. If you're gonna have expanded access to intel, I need to know about it."

Ratchet groaned. "Pit, is that what you younglings think? Jazz, I'm not SOUNDWAVE. Psych officers aren't TECHNOPATHS. My sensor mods are upped like your audials are augmented, or Red Alert's. Someone stands next to me, I can tell they're upset, can see how their EM field is tweaking, same as just about everyone else. I'm just trained to PAY ATTENTION and QUANTIFY it, and without doing a full scan, I'm only as good at it as anyone else who knows what they're looking for. But just because I know Cliffjumper's angry, or you're upset, or Prime's stressed, it's not MIND-READING. The closest I'd come to having intel is being able to tell when you're artificially modulating your field, which is NOT GOOD for your systems by the way, and I hope to PRIMUS that you're not doing that all the damn time." 

"Uh. Ur," said Jazz.

Ratchet, sensing weakness and the possibility of getting Jazz out of his quarters in the near future, narrowed his optics and deepened his growl. "Fragging PIT, Jazz. That's why I have to replace your harmonic amplifier like clockwork every vorn, isn't it?"

"Oh my, lookit the time!" Jazz stood, stretching and humming tiredly. "Well, so long as you're ok, Ratch, everything's fine, then! I'll pass on the good word, for what good it'll do. I imagine you'll still have a lot of nosy 'bots poking at you, but I trust that you can deal with 'em."

Ratchet carefully did not smirk at the sudden change of subject and instead mimed tossing a wrench, and Jazz cocked a finger at him knowingly. "Right. A'right, well, 'night, Ratch!"

"Good night, Jazz," Ratchet said, sighing as the door closed behind Jazz and sending the lock code with MUCH satisfaction.

He stared at the wall for a few nanosecs, considering, then made a note to see if he could get Jazz in for a psych consultation. What WAS the glitch using his modulator that much for, if he wasn't undercover? Ratchet suspected that Jazz had forgotten how to deal with mechs without having complete control over what he presented.

Either that, he thought, or Jazz was a Decepticon mole. Possible, he supposed, but not likely. If Jazz was a mole, they would have all woken up dead a long, long time ago.

Ratchet sighed again and shook his head, feeling very, very old as he stood and headed to his berth.


	3. First Case

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ratchet facepalms a lot, fixes things, talks to First Aid, and begins the process of annoying Prowl and Red Alert. All in a day's work....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a warning on this story: I am not a psychologist, the Autobots are not humans, and nothing that Ratchet says is supposed to jive 100% with human psychology. He will do things in this fic that NO ONE should do with their actual psychological patients. I try to make everything make sense, but I'm winging this here. I'm not a professional, and I'll happily hide behind the point that Cybertronian psychology, and the practice of Cybertronian psychological medicine, should very well be different than human psychology. So, if you read through this and think that Ratchet is doing things that are unethical or otherwise bad practice from a human standpoint, you very well might be right. But, this is not a psychology primer. This is a fic about giant metal alien robots that was originally spawned from the TF kinkmeme and which will eventually involve medic/patient sex for therapeutic (and perhaps recreational) purposes. So, I'm trying not to take myself TOO seriously here, and neither should anyone else. :P

The next day, Ratchet actually forgot his current drama, as his attention was taken up by planning his first scheduled procedure of the day (a follow-up on Prime's repairs, which required some rather involved recalibrations of his gyroscope and targeting systems) practically from the moment he onlined. He'd risen and left his quarters on auto-pilot, wandering toward the rec room and the energon dispenser as usual without really registering his surroundings. That lasted right up to the point where he turned with his ration cube in hand and realized that every conversation had stopped and every optic in the room was on him.

_Oh, for Primus' sake...._

"What?" he said, taking a drink from his cube, meeting one set of optics after another. Bumblebee looked worried. Hound looked concerned. Sideswipe smirked. Everyone else's optics slid away from his, and you could have heard a screw drop.

Ratchet tamped down on his irritation. _You are a professional, Ratchet. You are here to promote communication and well-being among these gossip-mongering bolt-lickers._

Professional. Right. Ratchet smoothed his field and voice. "All right, I know you all've heard about five different kinds of sensationalist slag, but it changes nothing, and if you want the real story--and I know this is a revolutionary idea--come by and ASK ME. Most of you're due for some maintenance anyway, am I right?"

Oh look, suddenly everyone had somewhere else to be or were deep in conversation with their neighbor.

Ratchet muttered "I thought so" into his fuel as he started toward the door.

"Ratchet?" Hound stepped forward, and the room quieted a little, everyone still quite interested. "So what DID happen?"

Ratchet stopped again and shrugged. "It's no secret. Short version is yes, I was a psychological welfare officer before the war. Back then it was a perfectly respectable medical specialty, and I trained at the Iacon Medical Academy before shipping out on the deep-space explorer _Corona_. I was in charge of psychological testing, evaluation, and therapy to increase resilience and performance, treat trauma, and overall keep the crew psychologically healthy."

There was an expectant pause after he stopped. Ratchet just sipped his cube and stared blandly back.

Bumblebee leaned forward a bit. "And...that means...?"

Ratchet vented a sigh. "It means exactly what it sounds like. I did psychological examinations as part of performance evaluation. I held office hours and took appointments. I counseled the crew on emotional problems and offered therapy if needed. I taught communication skills and coping strategies to deal with stress and anxiety. Sometimes I helped mediate disputes, if someone couldn't work something out themselves. Mostly, I listened and gave advice."

Sideswipe snickered. "Is _that_ what they called it?"

Oh, someone was definitely first in line for full maintenance. Ratchet made him an appointment right then and there and pinged the notice at the frontliner with particular zeal. "You got a question, Sideswipe?"

Said frontliner didn't back down in the least, though he made a face at the appointment notice. "Heard that morale officers used to frag their patients."

"And I heard that they didn't have much choice about it," Bumblebee piped up, to a rumble of agreement.

Ratchet had to give them some credit, he supposed. The whole tone of the room was partly morbid curiosity but mostly just...concern. For him. Which was...nice...he supposed. "Look. First, it was not 'fragging patients'. Sexual health is an integral part of psychosocial adjustment, so yes, if there was a chronic problem, I'd try to address it in a variety of ways. This mostly involved relationship and interpersonal psychology counseling and could also include physical therapy if needed."

Optics went bright with shock, and Ratchet bulled on before anyone could open their mouths again. " _But_ , that was only within specific medical guidelines, clearly communicated to the patient and my medical supervisors and with the approval and consent of all involved. It was a _medical_ decision, and there was all the protections against malpractice that patients had with any other medic. All the scandals about raping and whoring were after my time. When I was practicing, any PO who abused their authority would have been relieved of duty and brought up on charges so fast their gyroscopes would glitch. And the poor slaggers who were forced into whoring for crews were _not_ POs, no matter what they called them. That was fragging abuse, plain and simple. _Both_ of those are NOT what being a psychological welfare officer is about, and I would have disassembled anyone encouraging _either_ of those situations."

Silence again. Except for Sideswipe. What a huge surprise. "So...wait...can we go back to the fragging your patients part?"

\--------

When Ratchet finally arrived in the medbay, uncharacteristically late for his shift and still disgruntled, he considered it a small victory that he hadn't killed anyone or even raised his voice. Much. He'd even managed to escape with most of his dignity intact, for all that he wasn't certain that everyone had completely understood or believed what he'd tried to explain. 

Ratchet had a feeling that the communication issue was just...generational. As Ironhide had said, very few of the Ark crew was old enough (or had had enough pre-war military or paramilitary experience) to remember psych officers the way he did. And he was beginning to realize that sexual views had also shifted since he'd last had significant time for dalliances. He wasn't exactly one to sleep around. He was busy and his work often bled into his personal time, distracting him even when he was off-duty. He just wasn't a particularly good candidate for a long-term relationship, and honestly his own "psychosocial health" just hadn't really called for a lot of partner-oriented sexual activity. He certainly enjoyed such activity. It was just that scratching the itch with the occasional self-service worked fine and was a lot less likely to end with hurt feelings. So...he'd been out of the relationship loop for a rather long time.

And evidently, during that time, the younger generation had become _prudes_. The idea of any sort of sexual component to psychological therapy made them leap to conclusions steeped in all sorts of maladjusted assumptions about power imbalances and impropriety. Ratchet wasn't sure if it was a result of the war (and Primus knew he'd understand that) or just changing social norms or _what_ , exactly, but he couldn't help but see it as vaguely unhealthy and a breeding ground for all kinds of warped ideas about sex in general.

"Is something the matter, Ratchet?" Optimus asked.

Ratchet realized that he had been frowning at Optimus' readouts for far longer than he needed to. He shook his helm and keyed in the final adjustments. "No. Sorry, just...thinking."

Optimus knew better than to turn his head and disturb the connection to his dataport, but Ratchet could feel his regard nonetheless. He steeled himself for more discussion of psychological welfare officer duties, but all that Optimus said was, "I never thanked you for your help during the last battle."

"Hah!" Ratchet said, optics flicking to Optimus and then to the datapad. "No need to thank me. You know that."

"I know. And yet, I wanted to thank you anyway. I owe you my life many times over." Optimus' field was still compressed to an unbelievable degree, and his systems were stressed in what Ratchet had to admit he'd come to label 'normal' over the vorns, but his field resonated warmly with affection and gratitude. He was, Ratchet thought wryly, a redlined engine of steely altruism with a fluffy core of optimism and rainbow-colored turbopuppies.

"I'll put it on your tab," Ratchet said, smiling. Prime's readings were steady, the code tweak taking seamlessly. Ratchet kept an eye on the datapad as he gestured. "All right, try sitting up. Slowly. How does that feel?"

Optimus did, and the new gyroscopic algorithms performed admirably. "Good. Steady."

With a nod of satisfaction, Ratchet detached the line. "Good. Let me know if you need any adjustments once you've wandered around a bit and done some target practice. _And_ , might I remind you that you are supposed to be getting at least a third of a rotational cycle of recharge every night, with a level 3 defrag every tenth cycle?"

"Yes, of course." Optimus said, standing up and shifting from side to side a bit before standing.

Ratchet tossed his datapad on the berth. "'Yes, of course', he says, and yet I notice that your logs indicate you are _not doing it_."

The slagger didn't look even remotely sorry. "I will do my best, old friend."

"I don't want you to do your best, Optimus, I want you to get enough rest," Ratchet said, hands on his hip joints. "You short yourself too much, and it shows in your readings." Ratchet didn't say what kind of readings, just left it at that. Optimus hadn't mentioned any of the psychological welfare officer drama, which led Ratchet to think that perhaps none of it had filtered up to him yet. It was only a matter of time, Ratchet knew, but after the performance in the rec room, he wasn't feeling up to explaining it yet again today. He settled for, "More recharge will increase your response times, and those defrags will reduce your processor latency. If you won't do it because it feels good and you _deserve it_ , for Primus' sake, do it for the efficiency, all right?"

That brought on a tiny guilty hunch. A tiny one. "Yes, Ratchet. I will."

Aha, time to go in for the kill. "You give me your word?"

Ratchet almost smiled at the sight of Optimus Prime doing a good impression of a trapped petrorabbit. Asking for his word, Ratchet knew, was the equivalent of getting a carved-in-titanium warrant signed in his own innermost energon. 

He leveled a finger at his Prime. "One hectocycle. Your word that you'll follow my recharge and defrag guidelines for one hectocycle." A hundred Earth days would give Optimus SOME benefit, at least.

"...yes." Optimus straightened again. "You have my word."

"Good. See to it, then."

Prime beat a hasty retreat out of medbay. Ratchet just shared a "patients, ugh" look with Hoist and shook his head as he looked up his next to-do item.

\----------

Later, when his appointments were finished and he'd done as much of his built-up paperwork as he could stand, Ratchet sat back in his chair and contemplated the tiny space he'd cleared on his desk. 

The incident in the rec room bothered him more the longer he thought about it. It hadn't occurred to him that such a tiny part of the PO's repertoire of responsibilities and treatments would affect everyone's views so strongly. He'd have to take that into consideration, lest he have real trouble getting anyone to open up to him at all.

It also made him wonder what he'd find when folks finally _did_ open up to him.

Well, he thought, it wasn't going to get any easier for worrying about it. And the work certainly wasn't going to go away. But, if he wanted to appear helpful, he needed to get out there and _help_. Needed to get a few patients feeling better and spreading the word. Which meant that as much as he wanted to march into Optimus, Prowl's, and especially Red Alert's offices and discuss appointment schedules and treatment options, he couldn't. Each of those would be their own private wars to fight, and he needed to show a few wins first before he could possibly take on that level of resistance.

Movement through the open office door drew his optics.

"Aid? Could you come into my office, please?"

Ratchet had watched First Aid carefully ever since the Protectobot's shift had started. He'd crept in as quietly as a metal being could, watching Ratchet carefully and seeming to relax some when Ratchet just greeted him normally and didn't show any signs of wanting to bring up the source of the latest rumors flying around the Ark. Watching Aid jump at his call and then crumple into himself a little was sparkbreaking, really, but Aid nonetheless put away the parts he was sorting and came to the office door. "Y...yes, Ratchet?"

Ratchet got up and gestured to the two new chairs in his office, set up in a cramped but serviceable conversation area to the side of his desk. "Have a seat. And relax, I'm not mad at you. It's not your fault your gestaltmates can't keep their mouths shut."

"I'm _really_ sorry, Ratchet. I shouldn't have said anything, but I was just so shocked, and Groove was asking what was wrong, and I wasn't thinking, and--" First Aid looked down at his fingers clutching at the chair back. "I'm sorry. I...I looked up some of the old files on psychological welfare officers, and now I understand why you were so upset with me. You... you weren't one of those who was involved in any of the... malpractice, were you?"

"Not at all."

"I see." Aid's shoulders slumped even further. "I mean that is good! Great! I'm glad that you didn't have to go through that. And I'm sorry that now everyone has the wrong idea. It's totally my fault--"

Ratchet held up his hands. "It's all right, Aid. Really. It's not your fault, and believe me, this isn't the first time that I've had some wild rumor circulating about me and probably won't be the last. I'll explain and it'll be fine. No apology needed." Ratchet knew he needed to change the subject lest the apologies take all day. He realized that he was sitting stiffly and sat back, softening the line of his frame to go with his words. "What I really wanted to talk about is your own health, Aid." He gestured pointedly to the chair, which First Aid had yet to sit on.

"My health?" First Aid cocked his helm as he slowly lowered himself into the seat, and Ratchet could practically hear him running a self-diagnostic. "But.... My readings are all within normal operating parameters, sir?"

"The readings from conventional medical scanners are, I'd agree. But those won't catch field depression, and that's what I wanted to talk to you about."

First Aid looked at him blankly. "Field depression?" Ratchet waited while the Protectobot did a search for the term. "You...you think that I've got a psychological problem?"

"I think that you've got a _medical_ problem that affects your psychological well-being and expresses itself in an abnormally compressed field," Ratchet corrected. "My readings from those scanner routines you re-installed have pegged you for a textbook case. I can show you them if you'd like." Not that Aid had the training to analyze those readings, but First Aid was more than smart enough to see when something was outside a given acceptable limit.

"I...well...you're the expert, Ratchet. If that's your diagnosis, then that's good enough for me." Aid sounded a bit lost at that, his field churning sluggishly with worry. "I just don't...I just don't feel like I'm sick? I feel pretty normal."

_If I had a shanix for every time he'd heard that one...._ "That's not uncommon, if the problem has gone unrecognized. What is 'normal' slowly shifts, until the pathological state becomes the new 'normal'. Same as with physical problems."

"So...you think that I might have been this way for awhile?"

"I can't say for sure, since I didn't have access to these readings further back than a day ago, but the particular set of signs you're displaying...I'd certainly say it's a possibility." Ratchet would bet his hubcaps on it, in fact, but he tried to moderate his response because First Aid was already hunching down even further, his field pulling so tight to his frame that Ratchet had to up his sensitivity to get any reading on him at all. "Aid, you do understand that whatever the issue is, it's not your fault, right? It's not a failing that you might need some treatment."

"I know. I just...I'm supposed to help others, not need help myself. And you...your time is even more valuable than mine."

Ratchet gave him the Look. "Do I even need to tell you all the things that are wrong with those statements? Especially given that you keep lecturing me on how I need to stop being a self-sacrificing idiot and rest and refuel and maintain myself properly? I can repeat them back to you, if you'd like...."

First Aid smiled at that, thank Primus. "No, that's all right. I'm not...I'm not trying to be difficult here, and I trust you. If you say that I need to be treated, then I need to be treated." He sat up, squaring his shoulders. "So, what do you recommend?"

Ratchet smiled. "Talking."

"Well...that doesn't sound too bad!"

_Oh, you think so NOW...._ Ratchet kindly did not say it out loud.

\--------

They talked for about half an Earth hour. Ratchet kept the topics light, asking First Aid's opinion on this or that, asking about his feelings without probing too deeply. It took a bit, but eventually First Aid warmed up as much as he could when talking to his commanding officer, and by the time First Aid left, he was significantly more relaxed about the idea of undergoing therapy. 

No deep, dark secrets had been revealed. Ratchet hadn't expected any, at this point.

They set up a standard appointment schedule, and as First Aid stood to leave, Ratchet asked, "Will you do me a favor, Aid?"

First Aid perked up. "Sure, Ratchet."

"I'd like you to keep a log."

First Aid's helm tilted to the side. "A log?"

"Yes. Three questions, answered every day. Shouldn't take very long. Just answer as honestly as you can. No right or wrong answers."

"All right. What are the questions?"

"One, how did I feel today? Two, why did I feel that way? And three, how much recharge did I get the night before?"

"O...kay? They sound very subjective. Well, except the last one." A pause, and then Aid's head tilted to the other side. "...is that the point?"

"That's the point."

"Ah. Is the subjectivity for my benefit or yours?"

Ratchet grinned. _Smart bitlet._ "Both, ideally."

"Hmm. All right. Do you want them daily or...?"

Ratchet shook his head. "We'll go over them at our next appointment." 

First Aid nodded. "All right. I'll do my best. And...thanks, Ratchet. For helping me."

"All part of the job, Aid."

The medbay was quiet after First Aid left, the silence only broken by the sound of Wheeljack humming to himself as he kept himself busy on the night shift. It was late. Ratchet was, in fact, off-duty. He tapped up the beginning of First Aid's case file, leaving a lot of question marks in it. It'd been a typical first session, really, more about getting a baseline than anything else, and he knew it would be awhile before they'd make any progress. Dealing with psychological issues wasn't the same as replacing a stripped gear or cracked casing.

But, he'd planted a seed. Good enough. And hopefully Groove and Blades would pass THAT around, too.

_Because Primus knows I'll need it,_ Ratchet thought.

He checked his files and, just out of sheer masochism, sent notices for maintenance appointments to Prowl and Red Alert. They both, within three kliks, had sent back their usual form reply (identical almost to the glyph...Ratchet suspected that they'd collaborated on it and its various iterations at some point) about being on-duty at that time, blah, blah, security of the Autobot army, so sorry, blah blah. Of course, they had NOT been on duty for those times when Ratchet had scheduled the appointments a klik ago, but oh look, mysteriously now they were scheduled for duty, _how convenient_.... 

This was, of course, the first step in the long game that Ratchet always went through to get either of those mechs in for a maintenance appointment. It was almost as if they didn't _want_ to be examined. Funny, that.

Ratchet narrowed his optics, fingers twitching over his console with a repressed urge to start the next step in the re-reschedule dance, or perhaps just cut to the chase, bring in the big guns, and tell Optimus that a reminder to his senior staff about cooperating with medical personnel would not go amiss. But, then he vented a sigh and hauled himself to his feet. It was late, and surely he'd done enough good deeds for one day, right? Right.

Besides.... Let those two think that this was no different than any other maintenance appointment. It'd lull the fraggers into a false sense of security.

Wheeljack looked up as he came through the main medbay. "Whoa, now THAT expression doesn't bode well for somebody. Isn't me, is it?" He hoisted his project off the bench (it looked like he was wiring something.) "See, my extracurricular project is even non-explosive! Totally within the medbay rules, honest!"

Ratchet snorted. He was fairly sure that Wheeljack could make anything explode if he put his mind to it. "No, it's not you. Just looking at having to drag the senior staff in here for a check-up. I swear, I might have more luck if I enlisted the twins and set some traps."

"We talking about Red?"

"Partly."

"Oh, well, then, I don't think there's any 'might' about it. Want me to whip something up?"

"Primus, no."

"Aaaw, you sure?"

"I have never been so sure of anything in my entire life."

Wheeljack's vocal indicators pouted, though his field sparkled with amusement. "Aw. You're no fun."

Ratchet smiled. "Just the way I like it. Night, Jack."

"Night, Ratch!"

It was good to know, Ratchet thought, that some things never changed.


End file.
